I have two questions regarding tongues ?

[Presbyterian Continuist]

Do you know -- one time when I was widowed, after some really bad experiences with men in my old church, I stood angrily over my Bible with scissors in hand, fully prepared to cut out all the Scriptures about marriage? The only thing that stopped me was turning the pages and seeing the Scriptures on the other side of the first one I was about to cut out.

I learned my lesson that day, and I am in no way going to cut out Scriptures about speaking in tongues, as you would suppose. I enjoyed what you wrote -- that "tongues"-in-cheek thang!

No, I am interested in learning what the Bible says and intends when it brings up tongues. Since I was taught about tongues so poorly, since I am only now trying to learn the truth about tongues, I intend to learn as much as i can through what I read here and, especially, through the Bible. I can read a bit of Koine Greek, so I expect that to help. I can read a little more Hebrew, so I will reread Scriptures in Isaiah and any other places in the older Scriptures as well about this issue.

I was fooled by the old church; I do not intend to be fooled again. I want Truth, and I want to know the Truth.

I have no doubt about the sincerity of your desire to know the truth about tongues. Your posts reflect that. You have a genuine desire to serve the Lord to the best of your ability and would want to use any ability or tool that the Holy Spirit could give you.

Just image that you are asked to help a neighbour by digging her garden. You say yes. Then you look at what needs to be done but there are no tools available to help you do the job. How are you going to dig the garden? You can talk about the need to dig the garden, and how planting the plants would be much easier and more likely to grow if the garden was dug. Your neighbour offers you a rotary hoe because she can see that using a spade might be too much for you because of the size of the garden and the hardness of the soil. But you might say, "I don't believe in rotary hoes. That motorised stuff is too radical for me. You also might get others telling you of experiences where others using a rotary hoe might have got out of control and either wrecked the garden or injured themselves. So that might spook you from the thought of using a rotary hoe, so you try and use the spade instead. Instead of getting the job done quickly and efficiently, you end up with a sore back, blisters, and half the garden remains undug.

The story shows that in order to get the work of the Gospel done in the most powerful and effective way to win souls for Christ, God has provided a set of tools in the Spirit. Unless we use them, we will exhaust ourselves trying to do the job with our own strength instead of through the Spirit, and half the job will not get done.

Tongues is a tool to make your prayer time very powerful and effective with God, because you can express things spirit to Spirit in a way that your native language cannot. It is the difference between wearing yourself out using a spade to dig hard soil, and using a rotary hoe that will chop through the soil in a fraction of the time, enabling the planting of seed much sooner.

 

[Devorim]

Thank you so much, Oscarr. I am doing my best now but looking forward to when I retire and can do this right.

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

Thank you so much, Oscarr. I am doing my best now but looking forward to when I retire and can do this right.

The time that I feel like retiring is when I have to drag myself out of bed at 6am on a Monday morning to go to work.

 

[Devorim]

Pauluk3, who started this thread, hasn't been on CF for a long time. I sure hope, then, that it is all right that I ask another related question....

Do you, who believe in speaking in tongues, think that believers still sin?
Or does all sinning end at a particular time once they are a believer? When?
Or do they sin occasionally?
Or does every sin require repentance?
Or once saved, do we no longer have to be concerned about sin? Why or why not?

 

[Devorim]

To me, the above is related. Am I wrong? So much to figure out! It just SEEMS like in order for the H Spirit to speak through us, we would need to . . . I don't know! Live right? As much as possible?

My answers to the above:
Do you think that believers still sin? I still sin. I am not perfect.
Or does all sinning end at a particular time once they are a believer? When? I have not stopped.
Or do they sin occasionally? For myself, I think it is occasionally.
Or does every sin require repentance? Yes.
Or once saved, do we no longer have to be concerned about sin? Why or why not? I am very concerned. I hate sin. I hate it that I still sin.

I go for weeks, sometimes, not realizing that I've sinned. Is it the casual way I have been taught about sinning? I do not believe, yet, that I sin every day in word, thought, and deed, except in that I simply am not perfect as is G-d.

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

Pauluk3, who started this thread, hasn't been on CF for a long time. I sure hope, then, that it is all right that I ask another related question....

Do you, who believe in speaking in tongues, think that believers still sin?

It depends on your definition of sin. There is a scripture that says that the person who loves God cannot sin. But this doesn't mean that we can do no wrong or make no mistakes. I believe the type of sin spoken in that scripture is the general sin of rebellion or rejection of God - something that a genuinely born again Spirit-filled believer would never do. Speaking in tongues doesn't make us more holy. It is a tool to be used for the furtherence of the Gospel by empowering and amplifying our prayers. The common idea of sinning is what we do because we are still developing our sanctification. But we are justified - that is, deemed not guilty of our sin and sins by God Himself through what Jesus did for us on the cross

Or does all sinning end at a particular time once they are a believer? When?

Never, in a sense. We continue to develop our sanctification until we go to be with the Lord and then our sanctification is complete. If we got to a place where we are sinlessly perfect, we could become proud. Humility is recognising our shortcomings but also know that the righteousness of Christ totally covers them

Or do they sin occasionally?

In ourselves we are always coming short of God's perfect standards of holiness. We will always have unsanctified areas of our lives. If we could be fully sanctified in ourselves, Jesus would not have had to come and die for us on the cross. Perfection before God is not self improvement it is being clothed in the righteousness of Christ. He has taken our sin upon Himself and given us His righteousness. That is why we are fully accepted and perfect in the eyes of God, even though we can see imperfection in ourselves.

Or does every sin require repentance?

Repentance means a complete change of direction in our attitudes and the way we live. It is leaving one road and going on another. This happened once and for all when we accepted Christ as Saviour. Hebrews tells us that we don't have to make multiple sacrifices for sin. The sacrifice of Christ was once and for all and there is no further sacrifice for sin. So repentance is the wrong word to use for dealing with the failures of our flesh. We have been completely delivered from the guilt and penalty of sin as long as we abide in Christ.

Or once saved, do we no longer have to be concerned about sin? Why or why not?

We need to be concerned about the way we live in order to live a life that glorifies Christ and presents a testimony to the world of our faith in Christ. Paul says that we are to walk worthy of the calling that we have received. He says that we much always work to keep our bodies under control. This is why we discipline ourselves - not to try and keep the Law through fear of rejection by God. He will never reject us because we are His children and we will always be His children. Children can sometimes be naughty but we would never disown them as our children. God has the same attitude toward us. We live the best life we can for the Lord, not because we have to, but we really want to, because we love God and want to honour Him with our lives. So we talk to God often about our struggles, failures and successes and we ask Him to keep us pure by His grace.

 

[Devorim]

Okay. What is sin to me, then? When I fall short of what I should have done; when I do not do something I should have done; when I do something that is said in the Bible to be sin; when I discover that I have done wrong but didn't realize it, and I do not correct that sin.

Repentance is a big deal to me, however, Oscarr. Repentance means, to me, to take it to Messiah with complete contrition, with a firm decision not to repeat that error again.

Conveniently (unnnhhh!), I sinned yesterday. In a senior moment, I forgot that I had removed stock from a package I had just purchased for work. Opening it later, finding only half there, I took the package back to the store, getting my money back for the missing stock. Upon opening the copier, there was the stock. If I decided to just keep the stock, that would have been theft, therefore a sin. I have the stock here in my house now, and unless I get out of here, going back to that store and admitting what I did, I have a very serious sin going on....

_____________________________

At work. Merchandise delivered back to the store and accounted for. Determined not to let such a senior moment cause that problem again.

 

[Devorim]

I have also asked this (now, I can't find the post I am answering here!), wondering who was hearing something not being spoken and who was speaking human languages they didn't know. I absolutely believe that some of the miracle was in hearing, but clearly, some were speaking human languages they had never learned.

I recently received another new Bible, so I started diving into the study of the H Spirit, of tongues, and of those thing directly connected -- even though I have not yet retired. I am using many of the things I have read here to supplement my study, in order to know what the questions are. I want to KNOW the answers!

I found it very sad, when I first read it and said nothing, that someone, apparently writing of my desire to know the truth, wrote, "Ever learning but never coming to the knowledge of the truth." My dear, whomever wrote that, that smacked of ignorance. So sad.

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

Okay. What is sin to me, then? When I fall short of what I should have done; when I do not do something I should have done; when I do something that is said in the Bible to be sin; when I discover that I have done wrong but didn't realize it, and I do not correct that sin.

Repentance is a big deal to me, however, Oscarr. Repentance means, to me, to take it to Messiah with complete contrition, with a firm decision not to repeat that error again.

Conveniently (unnnhhh!), I sinned yesterday. In a senior moment, I forgot that I had removed stock from a package I had just purchased for work. Opening it later, finding only half there, I took the package back to the store, getting my money back for the missing stock. Upon opening the copier, there was the stock. If I decided to just keep the stock, that would have been theft, therefore a sin. I have the stock here in my house now, and unless I get out of here, going back to that store and admitting what I did, I have a very serious sin going on....

_____________________________

At work. Merchandise delivered back to the store and accounted for. Determined not to let such a senior moment cause that problem again.

What you did was an error, and you are correct that it would have been a sin if you had kept the reimbursment after knowing that you had the complete goods after all. Temptation is not sin.

The story of Zaccheus is a good case in point. There was no sin being a tax collector for the Romans, but it was to collect more than was his right. His repentance was to pay people back that extra money he had extracted from them. Jesus said that because of that repentance, salvation had come to that house.

When we do something that we know is sin, the Holy Spirit convicts us. We know it is wrong, and we feel unsettled until we put it right. That is the sign of a true conversion. A person who does not feel unsettled about sin may not be converted at all no matter how religious he or she is.

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

I have also asked this (now, I can't find the post I am answering here!), wondering who was hearing something not being spoken and who was speaking human languages they didn't know. I absolutely believe that some of the miracle was in hearing, but clearly, some were speaking human languages they had never learned.

That happened on the Day of Pentecost. The disciples spoke in tongues and people from all over the known world heard what was being said in their own regional languages. I tend to believe that the miracle was in the hearing. The disciples didn't know what they were saying, but the crowd certainly knew what they were hearing

I recently received another new Bible, so I started diving into the study of the H Spirit, of tongues, and of those thing directly connected -- even though I have not yet retired. I am using many of the things I have read here to supplement my study, in order to know what the questions are. I want to KNOW the answers!

I am certain that the scripture "seek and you shall find" will be fulfilled in your case. You have a genuine passion for finding the truth about these things, and God will certainly honour that!

I found it very sad, when I first read it and said nothing, that someone, apparently writing of my desire to know the truth, wrote, "Ever learning but never coming to the knowledge of the truth." My dear, whomever wrote that, that smacked of ignorance. So sad.

What nonsense! You can see how old I am, and I have never stopped learning. The more I learn the more I feel I need to learn. I love discovering new aspect of the truth that I can put into practice. At the age of 63 I decided to buy every book on divine healing and spiritual warfare I could get my hands on. What an amazing time I had reading all those books. I learned a whole lot of new things about both those areas that I didn't know before. That person has misquoted the scripture. The scripture is speaking of those people who a limiting themselves to a theoretical study of the things of God, but never discovering Christ as their Saviour.

We come to Christ not by academic study (which is great in its place), but by coming to Christ in faith for the forgiveness of sins and the new birth. But Paul says "study to show yourselves approved of God." This means that we have to have a learning spirit and not think that we have arrived and have nothing further to learn. Keep studying, reaching out for more knowledge of the things of God, and you will reap the good things from what you sow. I am doing a MDiv at my age! And loving every minute of it. I am studying and learning because I know the truth, and I want to find more ways of applying it for my own life and to be able to bless others.